


i fake my smile.

by rexflame



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Nonbinary Character, Other, Spoilers for The Vault, im sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-17 22:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11278434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexflame/pseuds/rexflame
Summary: what we had, and what we lost.





	i fake my smile.

**Author's Note:**

> it's one am and i beat the vault two hours ago and i've not cried so much in nearly a year  
> quick note - my oc/wol, ciloh'li, is nonbinary!

haurchefant falls in love with everyone

 

maybe that’s the side-effect of being someone like him, shattering his own mask and picking the pieces he wants to cover his face, maybe that’s the side-effect of a warm heart and open faces and welcoming arms, the man who’s whispered secrets of love against lips even as he’s cried in bed 

 

so there’s days where the silence unnerves them, because the world is colder without haurchefant’s love in it

 

ishgard’s chill is carried in ciloh’li’s heart and they forget how to love life, because the life they loved is no more, and there is only a reason to keep going so his life is not forfeit, as if there is some mercy from the gods anymore, any mercy for a simple miqo’te and brokenhearted elezen, and when a warm wind whispers through their hair they bite their lip and stare into the snow 

 

house fortemps feels cold, but no one can deny his valour, and there is the resolve that keeps them all going, fire-burning and ice-frozen all at once, evaporating tears and melding them against their skin, remembering selfless to the last, and they remember things too, little strings of summer-golden memories, halcyon days of sort, even if it is just the feeling of his fingers in their hair or the sound of his voice, it’s something to hold onto

 

if they’re remembered then the dead never truly die, right

 

they cry themselves to sleep for a week and wake up with dark circles under their eyes, and all the white magic in the world can’t cure  _ this  _ and it couldn’t cure him either, could it, so their hands are blood red, so they’re all just distant stars, just parallel lines, so the world keeps turning in that cruel unfair way

 

funny, ishgard had not bothered them before

 

they put on a smile and a brave face and take up a sword for a week, and tell themselves they’re coping, and they are, aren’t they, haurchefant wouldn’t want them to cry, a smile better suits a hero, they strike a dummy,  _ not like this not like this _

 

so they do what they think haurchefant would have wanted 

 

their stomach turns and they spit up bile when they dream of his face, but they’re still going, crying his name and reaching for the sky as if it’ll reunite them, and it works well enough, if they don’t give themselves time to think and work double-triple time

 

(ciloh’li falls in love with everyone, too, and haurchefant will never be a regret) 


End file.
